12-06-2014, 03:42 AM | #1 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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[Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
Cooking is the IQ/A Everyman skill of preparing good food from basic ingredients. Simpler food preparation - pre-packed food, or rat-on-a-stick - is done with Housekeeping or Survival. Cooking defaults to IQ-5 or Housekeeping-5, and is useful with Discriminatory Taste. Cooking equipment is in Group Basics from the Basic Set, with much more detail in High-Tech and LTC3, and machines that allow you to dispense with the skill in Ultra-Tech; equipment quality modifiers definitely apply. The Food college in Magic is rather more useful if the magician has Cooking skill. While Cooking is not a TL skill, I'd expect familiarity penalties to apply when using equipment from different TLs.
Many professional cooks have an optional specialisation, and Basic suggests baking, beverage-making and regional cuisines as plausible specialisations. Cooking in large volumes is certainly a familiarity; some GMs might feel it actually had penalties, in which case a Technique to buy them off is very plausible. Chefs in charge of large kitchens with many subordinates need Administration and Merchant (they traditionally buy materials themselves), and likely Leadership and Teaching. Cooking appears on templates in Dragons, Fantasy, Horror, Lands Out of Time, Martial Arts, Psis, Tales of the Solar Patrol, and Zombies. PU3 and PU7 have examples that include Cooking. Finding these by searching PDFs would have been easier if fewer GURPS writers listed "cooking" in their capsule biographies. Really good cooks can have surprisingly large social networks: there was a historical chef who cooked for and knew Napoleon, Wellington and the contemporary Tsar of Russia (thanks to Phil Masters for this point). Cooking for adventurers seems to be mostly a question of "We have someone with Cooking and time to use it, so we get nicer meals, and feel better. We'll adjust the watch structure so that the cook can do his job." I've seen it used as an entertaining complementary skill to social skills for peace-making and match-making. What have you done with it in a game? |
12-06-2014, 04:11 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
Could you use it as an adjunct to Poisons, disguising the taste?
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12-06-2014, 04:51 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: New York City
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
Quote:
A technique would mean that there should be no penalties going smaller & I'm not sure if that's realistic. |
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12-06-2014, 05:53 AM | #4 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
Quote:
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12-06-2014, 05:54 AM | #5 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
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12-06-2014, 06:31 AM | #6 | |
Dog of Lysdexics
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Melbourne FL, Formerly Wellington NZ
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
Quote:
Simpler food preparation - pre-packed food, or rat-on-a-stick is pure IQ default. Cooking skill on the other hand is the Chef, to make cooking an art and do so to feed a lot of people. |
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12-06-2014, 06:52 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
I think I have that Napoleonic-era chef right, but I'll have to look him up...
It occurs to me that anyone leading an army unit, ship's crew, or exploration party, could be sensible to make sure that they've got one good cook on the strength. It ought really to generate bonuses to morale-related rolls.
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12-06-2014, 10:43 AM | #8 |
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavķk, Iceland
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
Once while we were playing Star Wars one of the group had Housekeeping at decent level and prepared the food. My character had Cooking, because the idea of a Jedi chef amused me, and occasionally managed to oust the other cooking Jedi from the kitchen.
The joke was that in a fleet vs. fleet situation we'd manage the catering for the fleet. |
12-06-2014, 11:04 AM | #9 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
A very important specialization would be Candy Making. It requires very careful temperature control, so before thermometers and precise burners took significant practice and training.
My grandmother had a candy shop for a few years. Hand crafted candy is beyond amazing. She made flavored marshmallows. (Homer Simpson drooling - ahhhhhhhrrgh.)
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12-06-2014, 11:07 AM | #10 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Cooking
A very important complimentary skill would be Scrounging. Haven't we all had to do that to find a full set of ingredients for any one recipe? For we dirt poor, it takes even more skill window shopping for in season cheap stuff to cook.
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Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. Last edited by Flyndaran; 12-06-2014 at 11:36 AM. |
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